"There
Is No Vessel Like Peace That Contains All Blessings" ~
Mandala by Aurora Braun-Hassett

Aurora Braun is a
native of Peru and comes from a family of
artists. Aurora writes "I create mandalas out of love
for the
Mother. When I painted my first mandala, I realized that
I had hit on a boundless source of inspiration and
creativity."
She now lives in Santa Monica, California, and makes her living
as a translator and interpreter while pursuing her interests in
art, healing and the exploration of consciousness.

We
should learn to see everyday life as mandala -
the luminous fringes of experience which radiate
spontaneously from the empty nature of our being.
The aspects of our mandala are the day-to-day objects of our life
experience
moving in the dance or play of the universe.
By this symbolism the inner teacher reveals the profound
and ultimate
significance of being.

~
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche ~

In
working out a mandala for yourself, you draw a circle and then
think of the different impulse systems and value systems in your
life.
Then you compose them and try to find out where your center
is. Making
a mandala is a discipline for pulling all those scattered aspects
of
of your life together, for finding a center and ordering yourself
to
it. You try to coordinate your circle with the universal
circle.

~
Joseph Campbell ~

"The
Power of Myth", with Bill Moyers

Helga ~
OmniConscious

Practice
in Everyday Life

by
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

"While
Still in Your Body, Rest in
Peace"

Mandala
by Aurora Braun-Hassett

The
everyday practice is simply to develop a complete
carefree acceptance, an
openness to all situations without limit.

We
should realize openness as the playground of our emotions
and relate to
people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.

We
should experience everything totally, never withdrawing
into ourselves as a
marmot hides in its hole.

This
practice releases tremendous energy which is usually
constricted by the
process of maintaining fixed reference points.
Referentiality is the process by which we retreat from
the direct experience of everyday life.

Being
present in the moment may initially trigger fear. But by
welcoming the
sensation of fear with complete openness, we cut through
the barriers created by
habitual emotional patterns.

When
we engage in the practice of discovering space, we should
develop the
feeling of opening ourselves completely to the entire
universe. We should open
ourselves with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind.

This
is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping the
mask of
self-protection.

We
shouldn't make a division in our meditation between
perception and field of
perception. We shouldn't become like a cat watching a
mouse. We should realize
that the purpose of meditation is not to go "deeply
into ourselves" or withdraw
from the world. Practice should be free and
non-conceptual, unconstrained by
introspection and concentration.

Vast
unoriginated self-luminous wisdom space is the ground of
being - the
beginning and the end of confusion. The presence of
awareness in the primordeal
state has no bias toward enlightenment or
non-enlightenment.

This
ground of being which is known as pure or original mind
is the source from
which all phenomena arise. It is known as the great
mother, as the womb of
potentiality in which all things arise and dissolve in
natural
self-perfectedness and absolute spontaneity.

All
aspects of phenomena are completely clear and lucid. The
whole universe is
open and unobstructed - everything is mutually
interpenetrating.

Seeing
all things as naked, clear and free from obscurations,
there is nothing
to attain or realize. The nature of phenomena appears
naturally and is
naturally present in time-transcending awareness.

Everything
is naturally perfect just as it is. All phenomena appear
in their
uniqueness as part of the continually changing pattern.
These patterns are
vibrant with meaning and significance at every moment;
yet there is no
significance to attach to such meanings beyond the moment
in which they present
themselves.

This
is the dance of the five elememts in which matter is a
symbol of energy and
energy a symbol of emptiness. We are a symbol of our own
enlightenment. With
no effort or practice whatsoever, liberation or
enlightenment is already here.

The
everyday practice is just everyday life itself.

Since
the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to
behave in any
special way or attempt to attain anything above and
beyond what you actually
are.

There
should be no feeling of striving to reach some
"amazing goal" or "advanced
state."

To
strive for such a state is a neurosis which only
conditions us and serves to
obstruct the free flow of Mind. We should also avoid
thinking of ourselves as
worthless persons - we are naturally free and
unconditioned. We are
intrinsically enlightened and lack nothing.

When
engaging in meditation practice, we should feel it to be
as natural as
eating, breathing and defecating. It should not become a
specialized or formal
event, bloated with seriousness and solemnity. We should
realize that
meditation transcends effort, practice, aims, goals and
the duality of
liberation and non-liberation.

Meditation
is always ideal; there is no need to correct anything.
Since
everything that arises is simply the play of mind as
such, there is no
unsatisfactory meditation and no need to judge thoughts
as good or bad.

Therefore
we should simply sit. Simply stay in your own place, in
your own
condition just as it is. Forgetting self-conscious
feelings, we do not have to
think "I am meditating." Our practice should be
without effort, without strain,
without attempts to control or force and without trying
to become "peaceful."

If
we find that we are disturbing ourselves in any of these
ways, we stop
meditating and simply rest or relax for a while. Then we
resume our meditation.
If we have "interesting experiences" either
during or after meditation, we
should avoid making anything special of them.

To
spend time thinking about experiences is simply a
distraction and an attempt
to become unnatural. These experiences are simply signs
of practice and should
be regarded as transient events. We should not attempt to
reexperience them
because to do so only serves to distort the natural
spontaneity of mind.

All
phenomena are completely new and fresh, absolutely unique
and entirely free
from all concepts of past, present and future. They are
experienced in timelessness.

The
continual stream of new discovery, revelation and
inspiration which arises
at every moment is the manifestation of our clarity. We
should learn to see
everyday life as mandala - the luminous fringes of
experience which radiate
spontaneously from the empty nature of our being. The
aspects of our mandala
are the day-to-day objects of our life experience moving
in the dance or play of the universe. By this symbolism
the inner teacher reveals the profound and ultimate
significance of being.

Therefore
we should be natural and spontaneous, accepting and
learning from
everything. This enables us to see the ironic and amusing
side of events that
usually irritate us.

In
meditation we can see through the illusion of past,
present and future - our
experience becomes the continuity of nowness. The past is
only an unreliable
memory held in the present. The future is only a
projection of our present
conceptions. The present itself vanishes as soon as we
try to grasp it. So why
bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid
ground?

We
should free ourselves from our past memories and
preconceptions of
meditation. Each moment of meditation is completely
unique and full of
potentiality. In such moments, we will be incapable of
judging our meditation
in terms of past experience, dry theory or hollow
rhetoric.

Pythagoras
described geometry as visual music. Music is created
by applying laws of frequency and sound in certain
ways. States of harmonic resonance are produced when
frequencies are combined in ways that are in unison
with universal law.

These
same laws can be applied to produce visual harmony.
Instead of frequency and sound it is angle and shape
that are combined in ways that are in unison with
universal law. Geometric shapes can be orchestrated
in ways to produce visual symphonies that show the
harmonic unification of diversity.

Mandalas
translate complex mathematical expressions into
simple shapes and forms. They show how the basic
patterns governing the evolution of life workout the
most beautiful results.

The
word mandala arises from the Sanskrit and means
sacred circle. The circle symbolizes the womb of
creation; and mandalas are geometric designs that are
made through uniform divisions of the circle. The
shapes that are formed from these divisions are
symbols that embody the mathematical principles found
throughout creation. They reveal the inner workings
of nature and the inherent order of the universe.

Mandalas
act as a bridge between the higher and lower realms.
They are interdimensional gateways linking human
consciousness to the realms of archetypes and the
infinite. The relationship of form, movement, space
and time is evoked by the mandala.

Mandalas
offer a way to engage with the inherent harmony and
balance of nature. They bring the principles of
nature into our field of awareness. For thousands of
years, mandala imagery has served as a means to an
expanded way of thinking. The images transcend
language and the rational mind. They bring about a
certain wisdom of universal knowledge and a deeper
understanding of human consciousness.

When
I began drawing the mandalas... I saw that
everything, all the paths I had been following, all
the steps I had taken, were leading back to a single
point - namely, to the mid-point. It became
increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the
center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the
path to the center, to individuation... I began to
understand that the goal of psychic development is
the self... I knew that in finding the mandala as an
expression of the self I had attained what was for me
the ultimate.

~
Carl Jung ~

"Memories,
Dreams, Reflections"

"Peace is Invincible
for It Contends with Nothing"

Mandala by Aurora
Braun-Hassett

Wilderness
As Temple By Gary Snyder The wilderness pilgrim's
step-by-step breath-by-breath walk up a trail, into those
snowfields, carrying all on back, is so ancient a set of
gestures as to bring a profound sense of body-mind joy. The
same happens to those who sail in the ocean, kayak fiords or
rivers, tend a garden, peel garlic, even sit on a meditation
cushion. The point is to make contact with the real world,
real self. Sacred refers to that which helps us (not only
human beings) out of our little selves into the whole
mountains-and-rivers mandala universe. Inspiration,
exaltation, and insight do not end when one steps outside the
doors of a church. The wilderness as temple is only a
beginning. One should not dwell in the specialness
of the extraordinary experience nor hope to leave the
political quag behind to enter a perpetual state of
heightened insight. The best purpose of such studies and
hikes is to be able to come back to the lowlands and see all
the land about us, agricultural, suburban, urban, as part of
the same territory -never totally ruined, never completely
unnatural. It can be restored, and humans could live in
considerable numbers on much of it. Great Brown Bear is
walking with us, Salmon swimming upstream with us, as we
stroll a city street. ~ Gary
Snyder ~From Practice of the Wild, by Gary
Snyder, North Point Press, 1990.

A
sense of the nondual perspective may be gleaned through a
kaleidoscopic view of selected esoteric doctrines and
practices. Since doctrines and practices are necessarily
the dry shells of Spiritual Matter, one must place
oneself in the center of a mandala of lifeless words and
set the self and the words in motion, until the bits and
pieces whirl and spin into transient patterns of
unlimited beauty, their intricacies as inwardly boundless
as their unfolding is ever new, yet always perfect.

Mandala:
Buddhist Tantric Diagrams

Introduction

In
the Tibetan tradition, all religious works of art are
collectively referred to as sku gsun thugs rten. rTen
literally means "support," and in religious
terminology it signifies a support for one of the three
"bodies" of enlightenment. sKu rten are "body
supports," or images of the Buddha, deities, or saints
in the Buddhist pantheon, such as the images painted in
thangkas [see Jackson, Tibetan Thangka Painting, 1984]. gSun
rten are "speech supports," or scriptures such as
sutras and tantras, or commentaries on these. Thugs rten are
"mind supports," of which mchod rten, or
"stupas," are examples. Another object in this
category of "mind supports", or representations of
the spiritual embodiment of the Buddha, are dkyil khor, or
mandalas. The word dkyil khor means
"center-circumference," and describes both the
essential geometric structure and ritual significance of
mandalas. As one commentary clarifies [Wayman, Introduction
to the Buddhist Tantric Systems, p. 270, n. 1]:

As
for the center, that is the essence.
As for the circumference, that is grasping, thus grasping the
essence.

This
essence is the "heart" of the Buddha. In his
enlightened form, the Buddha is no longer in this world. As
one of his epithets indicates, the Buddha is tathagata, or
"thus-gone," and in the absence of his physical
body, the mandala represents his "body of
enlightenment."

A PRAYER TO THE
DIVINE MOTHER O Divine Mother,
In this extreme danger,
when we and all sentient beings
and nature,
herself,
Your glorious body,
face unprecedented misery and destruction,
inaugurate in fierceness and tenderness
the splendor of
Your Age of Passionate Enlightenment.
Bring us into the fire of Your sacred passion for reality,
rejoin the severed mandala of our being,
infuse our bodies, our hearts, our souls, our minds,
with the calm and focused truth of Your highest illumination
that brings each of those things into mutual harmony.
Engender in the ground of all of our beings
the sacred marriage,
that union between masculine and feminine
from which in each of us the Divine Child is born,
that Child that is flesh of Your flesh,
heart of Your heart,
light of Your light,
That Child that is free from all dogma,
free from all shame,
free from all false divisions
between holy and unholy,
sacred and profane,
free to burn out in love,
free to play in love free to serve in love,
as love
for love
In the heart of Your burning ground of life,
Teach us, O Divine Mother, directly
at every moment in this hour of apocalypse
the appropriate action that heals
and preserves
and redeems
and transforms. ~ Andrew Harvey ~ http://animalliberty.com/animalliberty/articles/andrew/andrew-1.html

Mandalas are
the pictorial representation of the Rectification (right
ordering) of the contents of consciousness as accomplished by
the Seer. Not only the Buddhists and Hindus possess such
designs, but the Western seers, too, like Boehme and Blake
and -- in literary form but still "visual" --
Swedenborg. Mandalas are not the highest manifestation of the
Real, because there is still a Seer and a thing Seen,
obviously. Only when the mandala itself is surpassed is the
Real perfectly reached. Take this symbol as your mandala for
unity in awakening: imagine an Eye in the center of a heart,
representative of perfected vision and perfected vitality or
emotion. It is the Witness, the observer, in the very Heart
of What Is Observed. It is subject and object wed, the union
of the ajna (third eye, in the center of the forehead) and
anahatta (heart) chakras.from
Keys to the Gate of Divine Truth by Petros (1997)http://home.earthlink.net/~xristos/messages.htm

This
ritual exercise provides a simple, respectful, whole
group structure for owning and honoring our pain for the
world, and for recognizing its authority and the
solidarity it can bring. The practice emerged in 1992
amidst a large, tension-filled workshop in Frankfurt, on
the day of reunification between East and West Germany;
since then it has spread to many lands. To many
participants it has been the most significant experience
in a workshop, if not in their lives.

Description

People
sit in a circle. They sit as closely-packed as possible
for they are, as we often put it, creating a containment
vessel - or an alchemical vessel for holding and cooking
the truth. The circle they enclose is divided into four
quadrants (visible demarcations are not needed), and in
each quadrant is placed a symbolic object: a stone, dead
leaves, a thick stick, and an empty bowl. Entering each
quadrant, the guide holds the object it contains and
explains its meaning. Here are some words we use.

"This
stone is for fear. It's how our heart feels when we're
afraid: tight, contracted, hard. In this quadrant we can
speak our fear."

"These
dry leaves represent our sorrow, our grief. There
is great sadness within us for what we see
happening to our world, our lives, and for what is
passing from us, day to day."

"This
stick is for our anger. For there is anger and outrage in
us that needs to be spoken for clarity of mind and
purpose. This stick is not for hitting with or waving
around, but for grasping hard with both hands - it's
strong enough tor that."

"And
in this fourth quadrant, this empty bowl stands for our
sense of deprivation and need, our hunger for what's
missing.--our emptiness."

You
may wonder where is hope? The very ground of this mandala
is hope. If we didn't have hope, we wouldn't be here. And
we will see as we proceed, how hope underlies what is
expressed in each quadrant..

"We
will begin with a dedication and a chant. because this
is holy ground . Nothing makes a place more holy
than truth-telling. Then we will step in one at a time,
spontaneously. We will take a symbol in our hands
and speak, or move from one to another. We may come in
more than once or not at all; there is no pressure on us
to enter. Even if you stay on the periphery, you will
find that, as each person enters the mandala, you are in
there with them. We will speak briefly. In brevity, words
are powerful."

Now
the guide, entering each quadrant, demonstrates how
its symbol can be used for speaking the knowings and
feelings we carry. For example, holding the stone
of fear:

"I'm
scared by the spread of cancer and AIDS. Will my lover be
next? Will I? Where can I go from the poisons? They are
everywhere, in our air, our water, our food.

"I
feel sorrow for the people of Tibet - and for the loss of
all the old indigenous cultures. Now when we most need
the wisdom of their ancient traditions, we wipe them out.
So I weep for us, too.

"Oh,
the fury I feel for our war on the poor! I can't believe
that welfare bill! What will happen to the women, the
children? What kind of jobs can they get?"

"I
don't know what to do. I recycle, I take the bus, I
change my diet, but in truth I don't know what can save
us. I am empty of ideas, strategies, confidence"

Since
we are not used to talking like this in public, we need
the support of the whole group. After each person has
spoken, let us all say, "We hear you." That's
enough. Your agreement or approval is not needed - just
your hearing and respect. And let us pause for three
breaths in silence between speakings. Maybe there's
something you'll want to say that doesn't fit one of
these quadrants, so this cushion in the center of the
mandala is a place you can stand or sit to give voice to
it - be it a song or prayer or story. In the Truth
Mandala we speak not only for ourselves, but for others,
too. It is the nature of all ritual. that it allows us to
speak archetypally - not just as separate individual
selves, but on behalf of our people, our Earth. Let the
ritual object. - stone or leaves or bowl - focus our
mind. We don't enter the mandala to perform or explain or
report to the rest of us, but to let that object help us
voice the truth of our own experience.

Before
the ritual's formal start, ask for the group's commitment
to confidentiality: "what is said here stays
here." Indicate also the duration of time you are
giving to the ritual; this helps people be
comfortable with the silences that arise. The ritual time
begins with your formal dedication of the Truth Mandala
to the welfare of all beings and the healing of our
world.

And
its proceedings are initiated with a simple chant or
sounding. The syllable "ah" stand in Sanskrit
for all that has been unsaid - and all whose voices have
been taken from them, or not yet heard.

Trust
yourself to sense the moment to draw the ritual to a
close. You will read clues in people's body language and
the energy of the group, or from utterances that seem to
provide an appropriate note to end on. As you prepare to
close, tell people, so that those who have been holding
back and waiting to speak can seize the chance to do so.
We often say: "The Truth Mandala will continue in
our lives, but this chapter of it wil draw soon to a
close. Let who wish to, enter it now and speak."

The
formal closing of the Truth Mandala is a key
moment, in which to enlarge the group's
understanding of what has transpired. First the guide,
speaking generally and on behalf of all, honors the
truth that each has spoken and the respectful support
that each has given. Truth-telling, as Joanna says, is
like oxygen: it enlivens us. Without it we grow confused
and numb. It is also a homecoming, bringing us back
to powerful connection and basic authority.

Then
the guide points out the deeper import of each quadrant
in the mandala. Each symbolic object is like a coin with
two sides; the courage to speak our fear, for example, is
evidence of trust. Indicating one object after another,
we say in effect: Please notice what you have been
expressing and hearing. In hearing fear, you also heard
the trust it takes to speak it. The sorrow spoken over
the dead leaves was in equal measure love. We only mourn
what we deeply care for. "Blessed are they that
mourn." Blessed are those who weep for the
desecration of life, because in them life still burns
clear. And the anger we heard, what does it spring from
but passion for justice? The empty bowl is to be honored,
too. To be empty means there is space to be filled.

Timing
& Group Size

We
have never conducted the Truth Mandala with less than
twelve people or more than a hundred. Even with large
numbers we draw it to a close after an hour and a half,
because the process is intense, and though people are
riveted, they grow more tired than they are aware. Place
the ritual near the middle of the day, with a break
following it. Be sure participants have already had an
opportunity to talked with each other in some depth (Open
Sentences or Small Group Sharing) before doing the Truth
Mandala, so these strong distilled utterances come out of
some reflection. Afterwards, some time for rest or
journaling helps people absorb the experience, and they
should honor that need rather than taking off for home
right away. Suggestions

1.
Participate. Don't hold aloof, but enter the ritual as
honestly and openly as you can, while fulfilling your
responsibilities as a guide. This is not hard to do.

2.
Review the section in Chapter 5 on dealing with strong
emotions.

3.
Feel free to adapt the arrangements to people's needs. In
workshops with the elderly, the mandala is set up on a
table rather than the floor; to speak each person rises
from their chair and stands by a quadrant, sometimes
using a can as a talking stick. In a psychiatric ward,
the stone and stick are replaced with other objects, like
a vine and a picture.

Living
truth is what counts. Embodying it. And this is a way of life. It
is not just something that we do one hour on Sundays or on Monday
nights. Sabbath must come every day, for each day is the main
event. We cultivate awareness in every moment throughout
each day, as much as we can, and slowly the realization dawns
that this is it, right now, this very moment -- nowhere else!
What it comes down to is a way of life that is sane and wholesome
and loving, intuitively honoring the connectedness of us all; and
not just as we humans, but all creatures everywhere. For
everything is sacred, everything is equally part of the mandala
of such-ness, of is-ness.

{ Editor's Note: All of
the mandalas displayed in this issue of the NDHighlights have
been presented with the gracious permission of the artist Aurora
Braun-Hassett and are individually copyright 2004. She may be
contacted on the web at http://mandalasbyaurora.com/html/home.html or by emailc/o[email protected]}